When we sit in Centering Prayer we need to remind ourselves that we are not doing anything and we are not experiencing anything. We are just sitting, open in pure faith to the Divine Presence and Divine action within us. There is the promise of this Presence within, all through the scriptures and we know it by faith, itself a gift from God. So just sit in silence believing. You have faith that God is with you and for 20 minutes you are not going to do anything which blurs that faith.

CENTERING PRAYER

20 minutes of silence

LECTIO DIVINA

Rev. 21:3 I heard a great voice from the throne saying ,” Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.

We awaken in Christ’s body as Christ awakens our bodies……………Then open your heart to Him and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ’s body where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it, is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly real, and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely, and radiant in His light we awaken as the Beloved in every last part of our body.

(“forget” your self-consciousness and allow the Mind of Christ to inform your being)

LECTIO DIVINA

From Mechthild of Magdeburg: “Effortlessly, Love flows from God into man, Like a bird Who rivers the air Without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world One in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, Humanity sings – The Holy spirit is our harpist, And all strings Which are touched in Love Must sound.

It is good for us to reflect every so often on what we are doing here. One could write a book about it (several have), but here are a few thoughts: We allow ourselves to let go of all separations and to welcome unification; we are de-centering on ourselves and centering on the Presence of God. This entails a kind of forgetting of self-consciousness that frees us to be in the Presence not by “knowing” but by “unknowing”……by pure faith. St. Augustine said, “God cannot be found ‘out there’ until God is found ‘in here.’!

CENTERING PRAYER

LECTIO DIVINA

Romans 8:35-39 Nothing therefore can come between us and the love of Christ, even if we are troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking food or clothes, or being threatened or even attacked. As scripture promised: “For your sake we are being massacred daily, and reckoned as sheep for the slaughter.” These are the trials through which we triumph, by the power of him who loved us. For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Our Centering Prayer practice is so simple and so without any immediate, apparent “product” that in the context of our contemporary life it may seem to be a waste of time. Yet it is precisely the simplicity and lack of immediate “result” that is so powerful for us, so where we need to be. It is a paradoxical practice. From what seems to be nothing we get everything,….. the promises of God, the fullness of life. The author Maggie Ross says, “The good news is that you now lead a life whose riches were once unimaginable. There is no language to describe it. Far from being a selfish undertaking, a life lived from the wellspring of silence influences other lives…..but without anyone’s being aware of this fact. Silence itself has resonances, and people who are centered in silence quietly open the potential of transfiguration to everyone and everything around them, living the ordinary through transfigured perception.”

CENTERING PRAYER

(Nothing could be simpler nor have a more profound effect)

LECTIO DIVINA

2 Corinthians 13:3,5 NJB “His power is at work among you….Do you not recognize yourselves as people in whom Jesus Christ is present?”